


put out the fire (with gasoline)

by colourmayfade



Category: Lost
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 12:10:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colourmayfade/pseuds/colourmayfade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He opens the note in the safety of his room and finds two names scribbled inside: the first is a man and the second, an Italian hotel. Sayid can figure out the rest. Spoilers for S4, AU based on episode 4x03 The Economist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put out the fire (with gasoline)

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally published on [LJ for the lost_squee](http://lostsquee.livejournal.com/649466.html) Christmas exchange of 2009! It was a gift for aurilly who requested "Sayid/anyone, something with definite romance and a little cute and flirty on the side. Cannon entanglements ignored".
> 
> I'm putting it up here because of a request on tumblr! Who knows if there will still be anyone to read it but hey, why not.

**tikrit.**  
  
  
Sayid sells his soul for more blood on his hands and nurses a broken heart drinking whisky in a hotel lounge.  
  
He requests his messages from the desk clerk and receives a piece of paper folded in half, tucks it in his pocket and presses it between his fingers all the to the elevator. There's a bodyguard in the corner who watches intently as he crosses the hall, but what that bodyguard doesn't know is that Sayid is watching him right back (only doing a much better job of hiding it).  
  
Copious amounts of alcohol in his system or not, Sayid has always won at  _this_.  
  
He opens the note in the safety of his room and finds two names scribbled inside: the first is a man and the second, an Italian hotel.  
  
Sayid can figure out the rest.  
  
  
  
 **venice.**  
  
 _Piazza San Marco_  is filled with tourists, tourists who are too busy staring at the buildings, perusing the shops and complaining about the heat to realize that a man in the crowd has been shot until that man is good and dead.  
  
These silencers, they almost make Sayid's job too easy, and he's about to slip into an alleyway when he notices her.  
  
She's sitting in a café, blond hair tied in a pony tail and a book in her hands. She doesn't look American but she doesn't look Italian either; she just blends into the scenery like reading at tables outside picturesque cafés is all she ever does.  
  
She's also staring back at him, blue eyes piercing right through him, but she smiles sweetly when she finds recognition on his face and beckons him over with a hand.  
  
"Juliet," he says, and there's a misplaced question mark at the end.  
  
"Sayid," she retorts, an amused note on her voice. "Have a seat."  
  
His eyes run around the  _piazza_  with concern and she catches it, leans toward him and whispers, "It's okay. Nobody saw anything."  
  
Sayid's head snaps towards her then, jaw clenching with anger, eyes scrutinizing her face as she smiles up at him.  
  
"Ben got to you too," he says, no question mark to be found.  
  
The smile remains plastered on her face with only the slightest hint of sadness behind it. Juliet raises an eyebrow.  
  
"Have a seat." Her voice sounds strangely commanding but he still smells the honey of her shampoo and something else, something herbal and relieving, like aloe.  
  
So Sayid takes a seat.  
  
  
  
 **toulon.**  
  
If  _her_  heart ever breaks, it does so coldly, coldly and quietly and no, Sayid doesn't wonder.  
  
They attend a wine tasting, a fancy one that is just another excuse of the overly rich to gather around and drink.  
  
He stays in the corner surveying the room while her red dress provides a suitable distraction; a present from Ben, left at their hotel before they even arrived in town. He overheard her calling it ridiculous before, but the gown does its job and men flock to her all night long, envious wives not that far behind.  
  
Sayid puts on a particularly closed face and everybody just assumes he's glum with jealousy.  _Some men react that way_ , they whisper.  _MusulmanduMoyen-Orient_ , you see.  
  
Juliet laughs and nobody notices him slip out the back and nobody sees him come in tucking a bloody shirt beneath his tux.  
  
She keeps a strained smile on her face and doesn't meet his eyes for the rest of the event. On their way out, her hand shakes and Sayid has to entwine his fingers with hers to steady it.  
  
(Hidden underneath the vines is a body that no one will find for days.)  
  
"You smelled like blood all night," she murmurs when they're left alone in the foyer. In her voice, he finds an inkling of fear, but an even heavier touch of  _regret_.  
  
In Toulon, Sayid begins to doubt.  
  
  
  
 **berlin.**  
  
Germany, and the entire country smells of construction, of smoke and new buildings rising over the old ones like an antidote for history.  
  
Berlin sees her with brown hair. She smiles easily, goes from the U-Bahn to the S-Bahn like a native; just like that she reinvents herself and Sayid is still who he was before, all he's ever been.  
  
His mission is a woman and hers is something else. They don't share a room, not even a hotel. Sayid's updates come from disposable cellphones, tongue curling around the name  _Elsa_  as if it's a whole new continent to be explored. The raise of her eyebrow, it can be heard from miles away.  
  
His mission is a woman and when it ends the same way it has always ended, Juliet doesn't say  _I told you so_.  
  
Sayid appreciates that.  
  
(Juliet adapts, Sayid stays exactly the same; perhaps that's how they each survive.)  
  
In another hotel room, Juliet's fingers will play with a box of red hair dye. She'll study herself in the mirror with Sayid watching from the doorway and he won't meet her eyes while saying, "Don't."  
  
Brown tint will run down the drain; the next morning she'll be blonde again.   
  
  
  
 **prague.**  
  
They are both used to warm weather; both grew up with sand beneath their feet. ( _And isn't that ironic?_ ) Neither enjoys the goosebumps that winter brings. But it's a Sunday and it's snowing, old buildings fall under a white veil and the ground becomes almost soft enough to be familiar.  
  
Sayid loses himself in  _Staré Mĕsto_  while Juliet asks for directions in words she can't quite pronounce. For a while, it's easy to pretend.  
  
There are men in black trench coats complete with hats to shadow their faces and if this were Hollywood, here is where the action would take place. Narrow streets, romantic curves and people who speak English with too thick an accent to believe.  
  
Instead, they stroll their way through Charles Bridge —  _Karlův Most_ , she tries with a twist of her nose — and nothing happens. Snowflakes melt into her hair; the concièrge at the hotel tells them about a statue that tourists touch for good luck and Juliet presses her hand against it, leaves it there a second too long.  
  
When her arms drop to her side, Sayid entwines his fingers around hers and tells himself that he's just keeping her warm. He doesn't look to see if she smiles.  
  
  
  
 **seychelles.**  
  
In the Seychelles, Juliet decides to play the high-society wife and sits by the pool with the trophies of everyone who matters, talking about nail polish and split ends and other things that she actually had to look up online to learn about.  
  
Sayid laughs when he sees her sprawled on the bed, eyes glued to the screen as if studying crucial intel. Walking over, he leans his body over hers, breath brushing against her neck, chest nearly grazing her back. Their noses almost bump into each other as she turns to face him.  
  
"You  _could_  just turn the conversation toward sex. Assuming you know something about that," he teases, expression carefully blank.   
  
A slow smile spreads over her face, a gleam behind her eyes as if saying  _I'll show you_  and Sayid's breath hitches in anticipation. Juliet notices this, of course, and it just makes her smile harder before answering, "I could turn the conversation toward Botox, too. I'm sure the wives would be much more interested in that."  
  
Then, turning her head back to the laptop — "At least my medical degree would be good for something."  
  
Sayid can't say he isn't disappointed but Juliet grins,  _what did you expect, a porn flick?_  and he laughs anyway.  
  
An afternoon of pink drinks and mindless chatter later, Juliet barges into their hotel room wrapped in a towel with chlorine dripping from her hair. Sayid is sitting on the bed, reading, and all she does is take one look at him and turn toward the bathroom in annoyance. He's quite sure she's rolling her eyes.  
  
"Mr. Avellino likes to play golf on Saturdays in a private club a few miles from here.  _Barbie_  tells me he always goes alone," Juliet says while casting him a glance over her shoulder and untying the knot of her bikini top. Beneath the strings are two lines of soft pale skin; excuse him if his attention is elsewhere. He finds it in himself to thank her, and it's sincere.  
  
(Juliet gets people to tell her things without too much effort, and the best part of it all is that they never remember saying anything — inevitably a policeman comes along with questions like, "And did anybody know Mr. Giraldi would be there that day?"  
  
Invariably the answer is a concentrated frown of the forehead and a measly  _no_.  
  
It should worry him, but at this point Sayid is not entirely sure she hasn't worked through his defences as well.)  
  
The shower is already running when he hears her shouted response.  
  
"Next time,  _you_  work the wives."  
  
  
  
 **moscow.**  
  
They can't blame Russia on the Communists, but they can certainly blame it on the vodka.  
  
Sayid leaves Ben with the empty feeling of freedom gnawing at his stomach.  
  
"Live your life," Juliet repeats, voice thick with distrust. "That's all he said?"  
  
"Yes," he confirms simply, concern shadowing his face.  
  
Neither of them fully absorbs this, neither is fully willing to believe it and, Sayid suspects, neither is entirely convinced that it's a good thing. So they sit at the hotel lounge and drink; one, two, three glasses until they lose count.  
  
Her cheekbones acquire a distinct blush and he stops taking notice of anyone who might look suspicious. The weather is still shivering cold though it's the beginning of spring. They exchange very few words, even fewer words that matter. It's not exactly nice, just strangely comforting companionship.  
  
Until it isn't, and Sayid finds himself pressing his lips against the hollow of her throat in the corner of an elevator. He isn't sure how it happens (maybe one hand over a knee or gaze that lingers too long), he'd like to say it was intentional, but. No.  
  
Sayid was raised to be a gentleman, to take his time with careful gentleness, not to fall into bed in a heap of limbs and drunken sex that is messy and good and embarrassing all at once.  
  
In the morning, he wakes up to a distinctively sweet taste on his tongue and a faint memory of running a hand through the knots of her hair while a man coughed in the corner, grumbling something that Sayid suspects to be the Russian equivalent of  _get a room_.  
  
Blonde hair spills onto the pillow and his left arm tingles with the weight of her body. His first instinct is to groan; as if on cue, the telephone rings and she moans, rolling her body into his chest with sleepy rebellion.  
  
He's got a growing pile of mistakes and this just might be the epitome, but his brain hesitates around the word, picks at its corner until it looks out of place. For all his strength and bravery (yes, Sayid has been both of those things and time has taught him to state it without bashfulness or arrogance, because the thing is — he's been many other things as well), an Achilles heel has always been there in the shape of womanly scented perfumes.  
  
So, instead of groaning, Sayid finds himself smiling. Lets the phone ring with their wake-up call for a moment and decides that today is as good a day as any to start sleeping in. It's the first time in two years they've had the day off; life undercover doesn't waste a second to rest. And two wasted years don't seem so wasted anymore.  
  
Outside their window, the last remnants of winter begin to thaw.


End file.
